There's been another story in the past about some guy who had cracked the credit cards (those with chips), and made the vulnerabilities known. He got in serious trouble...
Publishing vulnerabilities in open source software is perfectly ok, but with closed source stuff: I don't think it is. You should give the vendor the opportunity to fix the flaws before everybody tries to take advantage of them. It's different from open source, because, well, open source is open! And this very fact usually leads to very quick fixes, whereas a software company may have some latency in solving the issues.
Meanwhile, by making what you found public, you not only affect the users: you affect the company itself. It's very different from open source.
A company's future (hence, all of the people living off of it) may be jeopardized here. This is some responsibility and that's why I think anyone finding vulnerabilities should warn the vendor first, in a discrete manner.
Making them public just shows that you want to be known as the guy who found them: it's kind of a cocky behavior - and well, it backfires.
Well, I just checked, and according to the Webster's, "unvaluable" can be used as "invaluable", although it can also mean "with little value". So, I admit it was a bit ambiguous, but not totally incorrect. Thanks for pointing that out, though.;-)
Journalism is a profession. It has its rules, its ethics... and it has to be learned. And you actually present your work as journalism - which exposes it to professional critics and peer reviewing.
Blogging is certainly nothing like that. Would you call someone who gives random medical advice on a web forum a doctor? There may be some real doctors doing that, but there can also be just anyone.
I just find it too easy to claim yourself a journalist when it's convenient and not have to actually be one, that is if you put up some real lame articles on your blog, you can always say you were just "goofing around". This is a two-way street. So, being free of responsibilty and ethics, a blog cannot be associated with any professional activity. That's my view on this.
Very true. No problem with that, except when, as with Microsoft, there is virtually no alternative. Google is quickly getting there. It's a corporation, but when people have nowhere else to go, the deal becomes unfair. Obviously, all Google is after as a corporation is money.
This is one of the reasons why OSS is becoming unvaluable. This is almost the only answer when dealing with essential tools. When our very basic needs are in the hands of monopolies, we're in big trouble. And I see it as unavoidable - only monopolistic strategies can work when you have to serve everyone's core needs. This is where OSS is the answer. It's often the only way to have viable alternatives. So here, I think the answer is an Open Source initiative: an Open Source search engine. It would not kill Google, but it would provide us with an alternative. I don't want to live in a world with no alternative.
While employers certainly appreciate the "ability to deliver", this is not necessarily what's going to get you a higher salary. (Well, assuming you're after that, but who wants to work more without getting paid more?)
So, while experience is a good way of getting a job, too much specific experience will work against you, in a way: you risk falling into the "Peters principle" trap. You know you'll get a job, but you risk never getting ahead much in your career. This is exactly why so many people attend MBAs these days. Not just to be competent and have a job - but to enhance their careers. Something experience itself is often not enough to achieve.
Really...?;-) Firefox takes up more than 32 MB just upon loading.
When you say "cute as a button", you mean cute as those ugly spots on the average teenager geek's face?
It must take at least 5 minutes to load?:D
This is the most hilarious thing I've read in a while!
Re:Perhaps there is a reason...
on
DVHS on a Budget
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I did talk about the usual case, where indeed the manufacturing process is the exact same (so, no extra cost here), but the final products are graded through some kind of final testing before shipping. The testing can be the exact same too and just lead different results as to classify the end product. This is very often how the industrial process works. In that scenario, there is no extra cost; the different grades are just determined at the end of the fabrication process. Of course, there is also a batch of items that are even unusable and are thrown away, and/or recycled.
This is how it works for fabricating chips, for instance, and how it used to work for the fabrication of floppy disks (which were low-level formatted at the factory and graded according to their ability to retain some specific density requirements). For chips, they are tested thoroughly and graded according to the results of the tests. If you thought chips were just manufactured and shipped, you're really wrong. I'm willing to guess the exact same process applies to magnetic/optical media, because there is always a certain amount of failure during fabrication and a factory must ensure every product that goes out will work - or at least keep the failure ratio extremely low. For instance, how many CD-Rs that you bought have failed you and you know for sure it was because of the medium? Very, very few, I'm guessing. How many CD-Rs do you think a factory throws away after fabricating them and they don't pass testing? Probably much more than you think.
Re:Perhaps there is a reason...
on
DVHS on a Budget
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Well, maybe so. Actually, I bet so. Just like the story of floppy disks (single sided vs. double sided vs. high density), the actual industrial process might be exactly identical, but the testing phase will allow different grades of quality.
I've read some people suggest that SVHS and DVHS might be exactly the same media, just sold as different to make potentially more money. Well, that would be actually counter-productive; products need to pass some tests before being ready to get sold. That wouldn't make any industrial sense to validate all the products for the highest grade, throw away the rest and sell those who passed as different products. So when you buy the cheaper product, you can almost rest assured that it is of lowest quality. And just because it seems to "work" doesn't mean that it's reliable. What you know is that there are great chances that they haven't been tested for the use you're trying to put them to.
Unless factories can afford to throw away a lot of material, there is absolutely no incentive to sell identical quality products as differents grades. I just don't see how that could be.
Finally, some people would raise the question of "overclocking", which has become pretty "mainstream" amongst PC users. When you overclock, you know you're playing with the safety margins that have been validated in the factory. It's your choice, but it's pushing your luck...
The banks and ATM suppliers do not care what you (or I) want.
Ouch, isn't that exactly when we know something has gone wrong? Businesses not caring about their customers anymore? Are banks not businesses? If they behave like that, it means that they can. Which means they don't have to compete to get you. I'll let you figure out what that ultimately means.
Well, personally, I would. Freedom is priceless. Well, not quite, but almost. I hate those fees as well, but I would hate it even more that some random business knows how much cash I have, how much I draw and just to be bothered with constant advertising. I wouldn't be willing to give up privacy just to save the tiny fees I'm charged when I draw some cash - which, by the way, can usually be avoided if I draw cash in an ATM from my own bank or one of its agencies.
To me, unwanted advertising is pretty much equivalent to spamming.
Well, that could be. I highly doubt those were dynamically-displayed ads, like banners on web sites, though. If they become "dynamic"... this is where the problems start. ATMs could very well display ads according to your buying habits, which could be guessed from your credit card internal history. I'm pretty sure this kind of stuff still doesn't exist.
Unfortunately, this might very well be the future of ATMs (only a bit exxagerated, but maybe not by much). Ad-sponsored ATMs are not that out of the question. So, instead of a "cute" logo from the bank, you might, in some future, be seeing a few ads while drawing some cash. Of course, the ATM vendor will claim to the banks that their system is totally secure and cannot be hijacked. We all know what that means.
Don't assume that every hacking attempt has financial profit as a goal. Don't even assume that they always have a goal at all. Most of the time, just hacking "something big" is a nice endeavor in itself for the average hacker joe, or even for a bunch of them. Being able to "shake the big tree" is a power trip.
Ants do actively communicate, and that's exactly how they get so efficient and have an intelligent global functioning.
The comparison with neurons was actually interesting. To me, it seems like what we could ultimately define as intelligence is the ability to communicate and act on the information that's exchanged.
Because you seriously think you can write a Windows driver in C#? That would be where it should start. That being said, don't C# ever dare touch Linux. 8)
As I said lately, I can't wait till some company patents a list of sentences. Then they will sue the heck out of anybody who has used, uses or will use these sentences in any book, article, speech or whatever. Dear Lord, poor world we live in.
Yes. And anyway, unless patent applications *and* enforcement become a lot less expensive than they are now, as someone else has pointed out, only the bigger companies will be able to benefit from them. The smaller ones will die. If there is a law meant to protect, then it should at least guarantee that everyone can be protected. This is clearly not the case with patents. What can of constitution would permit a law that can protect only a small category - and a category that needs the less protection? This is my take on patents, software or otherwise.
That being said, anyone who actually knows something about software development will know that software cannot be patented. This is absurd. Its very nature makes it too abstract and general to patent it. Why not patent sentences, while we are at it? Thus, writers would get sued for using certain sentences or expressions in their books. This is exactly the same thing, only even more frightening.
In a word: greed. Patents are useless until someone violates them and you decide to sue. They are not enforced if you don't sue. What does that give you? The right to claim money you didn't work for.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not against protecting your work. But Copyrights should be all that's really needed. Patents (especially when too broad) are the death of industry. Unfortunately, the more patents applications there are, the less they can be evaluated before being accepted and the broader they tend to get. This is a no-win situation in the long run...
All jokes aside, I think we can achieve the same (and much better) with totally random-generated patterns. Using living beings to generate this might seem fancy, but it's really not. I fail to see a difference with random stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
There's been another story in the past about some guy who had cracked the credit cards (those with chips), and made the vulnerabilities known. He got in serious trouble...
Publishing vulnerabilities in open source software is perfectly ok, but with closed source stuff: I don't think it is. You should give the vendor the opportunity to fix the flaws before everybody tries to take advantage of them. It's different from open source, because, well, open source is open! And this very fact usually leads to very quick fixes, whereas a software company may have some latency in solving the issues.
Meanwhile, by making what you found public, you not only affect the users: you affect the company itself. It's very different from open source.
A company's future (hence, all of the people living off of it) may be jeopardized here. This is some responsibility and that's why I think anyone finding vulnerabilities should warn the vendor first, in a discrete manner.
Making them public just shows that you want to be known as the guy who found them: it's kind of a cocky behavior - and well, it backfires.
Well, I just checked, and according to the Webster's, "unvaluable" can be used as "invaluable", although it can also mean "with little value". So, I admit it was a bit ambiguous, but not totally incorrect. Thanks for pointing that out, though. ;-)
Journalism is a profession. It has its rules, its ethics... and it has to be learned. And you actually present your work as journalism - which exposes it to professional critics and peer reviewing.
Blogging is certainly nothing like that. Would you call someone who gives random medical advice on a web forum a doctor? There may be some real doctors doing that, but there can also be just anyone.
I just find it too easy to claim yourself a journalist when it's convenient and not have to actually be one, that is if you put up some real lame articles on your blog, you can always say you were just "goofing around". This is a two-way street. So, being free of responsibilty and ethics, a blog cannot be associated with any professional activity. That's my view on this.
Very true. No problem with that, except when, as with Microsoft, there is virtually no alternative. Google is quickly getting there. It's a corporation, but when people have nowhere else to go, the deal becomes unfair. Obviously, all Google is after as a corporation is money.
This is one of the reasons why OSS is becoming unvaluable. This is almost the only answer when dealing with essential tools. When our very basic needs are in the hands of monopolies, we're in big trouble. And I see it as unavoidable - only monopolistic strategies can work when you have to serve everyone's core needs. This is where OSS is the answer. It's often the only way to have viable alternatives. So here, I think the answer is an Open Source initiative: an Open Source search engine. It would not kill Google, but it would provide us with an alternative. I don't want to live in a world with no alternative.
What do you win? Now they know they can hack your box back and wreck it! :)
While employers certainly appreciate the "ability to deliver", this is not necessarily what's going to get you a higher salary. (Well, assuming you're after that, but who wants to work more without getting paid more?)
So, while experience is a good way of getting a job, too much specific experience will work against you, in a way: you risk falling into the "Peters principle" trap. You know you'll get a job, but you risk never getting ahead much in your career. This is exactly why so many people attend MBAs these days. Not just to be competent and have a job - but to enhance their careers. Something experience itself is often not enough to achieve.
Really...? ;-) Firefox takes up more than 32 MB just upon loading.
When you say "cute as a button", you mean cute as those ugly spots on the average teenager geek's face?
It must take at least 5 minutes to load? :D
Real men don't use VB.
Windows does get installed on computers even before they are purchased! Talk about efficient spreading... a spyware vendor's wildest dream... ;-)
This is the most hilarious thing I've read in a while!
I did talk about the usual case, where indeed the manufacturing process is the exact same (so, no extra cost here), but the final products are graded through some kind of final testing before shipping. The testing can be the exact same too and just lead different results as to classify the end product. This is very often how the industrial process works. In that scenario, there is no extra cost; the different grades are just determined at the end of the fabrication process. Of course, there is also a batch of items that are even unusable and are thrown away, and/or recycled.
This is how it works for fabricating chips, for instance, and how it used to work for the fabrication of floppy disks (which were low-level formatted at the factory and graded according to their ability to retain some specific density requirements). For chips, they are tested thoroughly and graded according to the results of the tests. If you thought chips were just manufactured and shipped, you're really wrong. I'm willing to guess the exact same process applies to magnetic/optical media, because there is always a certain amount of failure during fabrication and a factory must ensure every product that goes out will work - or at least keep the failure ratio extremely low. For instance, how many CD-Rs that you bought have failed you and you know for sure it was because of the medium? Very, very few, I'm guessing. How many CD-Rs do you think a factory throws away after fabricating them and they don't pass testing? Probably much more than you think.
Well, maybe so. Actually, I bet so. Just like the story of floppy disks (single sided vs. double sided vs. high density), the actual industrial process might be exactly identical, but the testing phase will allow different grades of quality.
I've read some people suggest that SVHS and DVHS might be exactly the same media, just sold as different to make potentially more money. Well, that would be actually counter-productive; products need to pass some tests before being ready to get sold. That wouldn't make any industrial sense to validate all the products for the highest grade, throw away the rest and sell those who passed as different products. So when you buy the cheaper product, you can almost rest assured that it is of lowest quality. And just because it seems to "work" doesn't mean that it's reliable. What you know is that there are great chances that they haven't been tested for the use you're trying to put them to.
Unless factories can afford to throw away a lot of material, there is absolutely no incentive to sell identical quality products as differents grades. I just don't see how that could be.
Finally, some people would raise the question of "overclocking", which has become pretty "mainstream" amongst PC users. When you overclock, you know you're playing with the safety margins that have been validated in the factory. It's your choice, but it's pushing your luck...
Ouch, isn't that exactly when we know something has gone wrong? Businesses not caring about their customers anymore? Are banks not businesses? If they behave like that, it means that they can. Which means they don't have to compete to get you. I'll let you figure out what that ultimately means.
Well, personally, I would. Freedom is priceless. Well, not quite, but almost. I hate those fees as well, but I would hate it even more that some random business knows how much cash I have, how much I draw and just to be bothered with constant advertising. I wouldn't be willing to give up privacy just to save the tiny fees I'm charged when I draw some cash - which, by the way, can usually be avoided if I draw cash in an ATM from my own bank or one of its agencies.
To me, unwanted advertising is pretty much equivalent to spamming.
Well, that could be. I highly doubt those were dynamically-displayed ads, like banners on web sites, though. If they become "dynamic"... this is where the problems start. ATMs could very well display ads according to your buying habits, which could be guessed from your credit card internal history. I'm pretty sure this kind of stuff still doesn't exist.
Unfortunately, this might very well be the future of ATMs (only a bit exxagerated, but maybe not by much). Ad-sponsored ATMs are not that out of the question. So, instead of a "cute" logo from the bank, you might, in some future, be seeing a few ads while drawing some cash. Of course, the ATM vendor will claim to the banks that their system is totally secure and cannot be hijacked. We all know what that means.
Don't assume that every hacking attempt has financial profit as a goal. Don't even assume that they always have a goal at all. Most of the time, just hacking "something big" is a nice endeavor in itself for the average hacker joe, or even for a bunch of them. Being able to "shake the big tree" is a power trip.
Ants do actively communicate, and that's exactly how they get so efficient and have an intelligent global functioning.
The comparison with neurons was actually interesting. To me, it seems like what we could ultimately define as intelligence is the ability to communicate and act on the information that's exchanged.
Because you seriously think you can write a Windows driver in C#? That would be where it should start. That being said, don't C# ever dare touch Linux. 8)
Yup, more patent crap.
As I said lately, I can't wait till some company patents a list of sentences. Then they will sue the heck out of anybody who has used, uses or will use these sentences in any book, article, speech or whatever. Dear Lord, poor world we live in.
Haven't you considered the possibility that you are the leaky one?
Yes. And anyway, unless patent applications *and* enforcement become a lot less expensive than they are now, as someone else has pointed out, only the bigger companies will be able to benefit from them. The smaller ones will die. If there is a law meant to protect, then it should at least guarantee that everyone can be protected. This is clearly not the case with patents. What can of constitution would permit a law that can protect only a small category - and a category that needs the less protection? This is my take on patents, software or otherwise.
That being said, anyone who actually knows something about software development will know that software cannot be patented. This is absurd. Its very nature makes it too abstract and general to patent it. Why not patent sentences, while we are at it? Thus, writers would get sued for using certain sentences or expressions in their books. This is exactly the same thing, only even more frightening.
really is...
In a word: greed. Patents are useless until someone violates them and you decide to sue. They are not enforced if you don't sue. What does that give you? The right to claim money you didn't work for.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not against protecting your work. But Copyrights should be all that's really needed. Patents (especially when too broad) are the death of industry. Unfortunately, the more patents applications there are, the less they can be evaluated before being accepted and the broader they tend to get. This is a no-win situation in the long run...
This kind of... sucks, really.
All jokes aside, I think we can achieve the same (and much better) with totally random-generated patterns. Using living beings to generate this might seem fancy, but it's really not. I fail to see a difference with random stuff.